All posts tagged qatar

If Qatar’s leadership ever thought calls to reform labor laws and address poor living conditions for migrant workers ahead of the 2022 World Cup could be driven away with rhetoric and the passage of time, it appears increasingly clear that the international body that holds sway over world soccer’s biggest tournament isn’t on the same page. Read More »

Dubai’s benchmark DFM index is already up some 13% this year, after piling on a whopping 108% in 2013. Qatar, its Persian Gulf neighbour, isn’t far behind with its main stocks gauge up 9% in January following a relatively modest 24% gain last year.

Last year was mostly about investors re-rating Dubai, after a global economic crisis-induced slump there, on the back of a strong revival in trade and tourism and a sharp pickup in its real estate sector – a key component of the emirate’s growth plans. Its safe haven status amid unrest elsewhere in the region helped, while Dubai winning the right to host the World Expo in 2020 added to the attraction. Read More »

The drumbeat for labor reform in Qatar is growing louder as human rights groups use international attention from winning a bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup to shed light on cases of forced labor, human trafficking and unsanitary living conditions for low-paid migrant workers.

That criticism is a familiar one across the Arab Gulf, where low-wage laborers primarily from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines and parts of Africa tend to compose a majority of workforces.

Some countries and companies in the Gulf have taken steps to improve conditions for workers since an outcry started to build several years ago over labor exploitation and the structure of the labor system in the region. Read More »

Qatar National Bank’s Chief Financial Officer Ramzi Mari sums up his company’s main ambition in one straightforward sentence: to become the largest financial institution in the Middle East and Africa by 2017. It’s already one of the biggest banks in the Middle East and North Africa, boasting a $122 billion balance sheet that it built up in large part through acquisitions in places such Egypt, Iraq and Libya. Now the bank has set its sights on the rest of Africa, where it hopes to acquire a network owned by a foreign lender, Mr. Ramzi tells The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ: QNB in recent years bought several banking assets across the Arab World. Are you still hungry for more deals?

Mr. Ramzi: “We’ve done about four or five acquisitions over the past four or five years in Libya, in Iraq, in Tunisia and in Egypt. This process will continue. However, we are going to be very selective in where we go and that’s why I don’t think we will be as aggressive as we were in the last five years because we have to be very selective. The issue is not to go and do acquisitions, the multiples are very important to us. In the last two years the multiples for banks grew and we believe some of these multiples offered now are not within our parameters.”

WSJ: Where are you looking to make acquisitions?

Mr. Ramzi: “The next step will be Africa. We are just looking, still studying the market. We prefer to acquire a bank where they have operations in more than one country, where they have more than one market.” Read More »

Real estate is a big part of Qatar’s development agenda: the country will plunk down more than $200 billion on property in the next 10 years as it prepares to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, Deloitte estimated in a July report.

Mazaya Qatar Real Estate, founded in 2008 and listed on the Qatar Exchange in 2010, is one of the companies that’s hoping to profit handsomely from this growth, while also looking to make a name for itself internationally.

Perhaps, the only story that could further drag Qatar’s World Cup reputation through the mud would be the unimaginable scenario where a soccer player is being held against his will in the country, living in destitute conditions, over a labour dispute with his employer.

That would be too far-fetched, though, surely? Well, no, actually. This seems to be the latest labour story to come out of Qatar.

The reports come at a delicate time for Qatar, which is building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup and is increasingly trying to project itself on the global stage as a progressive force in the region. The small Persian Gulf emirate has some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. Read More »

Qatar in the past decade has emerged as one of the world’s most aggressive buyers of art. But as the wealthy Gulf State splurges part of its gas revenues on trying to become a cultural center of relative importance, some form of controversy seems inevitable.

A Doha museum last week removed a five-meter sculpture depicting a famous head butt on an opponent by French footballer Zinedine Zidane from the city’s corniche only one month after it was erected.

The reasons behind the statue’s removal remain vague. A Qatari newspaper said the statue had hurt religious sensitivities, while others simply criticized the artwork for its poor taste because it glorified an act of violence. More conservative Muslim nations ban public statues of human beings to avoid idolization. Read More »

Arab Gulf cities are spending billions of dollars building new universities and museums, part of a long-term move to put themselves on the map as cultural hubs. With this bid for prominence, however, has come a wave of protest from abroad over labor rights that threatens to dent the value of these investments.

Gulf Labor, a group of artists formed two years ago to highlight what they see as exploitative labor practices on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, launched a year-long protest last month. Artists are to submit works that explore “the coercive recruitment and deplorable living and working conditions of migrant laborers in Abu Dhabi” who are building branches of the Guggenheim and Louvre museums on Saadiyat, a $26 billion mega-development with museums, universities, resorts, housing and golf courses. Read More »

Qatar, the pint-size emirate with outsize political ambitions and enormous natural gas reserves, is struggling to rid itself of an intractable domestic crisis: gridlock.

The Gulf Arab nation’s burgeoning wealth has resulted in a massive urban transformation of the capital city Doha, with mega-construction and infrastructure projects snarling traffic in virtually every intersection.

Wealthy citizens and residents, meanwhile, are also clogging the streets with vehicles. The population of Qatar has almost doubled since 2006 to more than 1.8 million people, yet the number of cars on Doha roads has skyrocketed to about 876,000 on average each work day, according to the Ministry of Interior – meaning nearly half the population is driving each day. Read More »